Tee Grizzley started studying law after being accused with armed robbery and arrested in 2015 in an effort to reduce the length of his 15-year sentence. The Detroit-born rapper said in an interview with Million Dollaz Worth Of Game that his own familiarity with the law enabled his early release from prison after only 18 months.
“I didn’t think I was getting out,” Grizzley said. “Man, look I got n-ggas in there telling me, ‘You better take ten years if they try to give that to you.’”
He continued by saying that he frequently sought advice from both his legal counsel and his fellow prisoners, who all advised him to avoid trial at all costs. But Grizzley started frequenting the library since spending ten years in prison didn’t sit well with him.
“They say we armed cause of the sledgehammer right?” Grizzley said, referring to the tool he allegedly used to commit the series of robberies at Michigan State University. “So I get in the law book. First thing I see I go to that type of shit, and they say, ‘You can only consider something a weapon if they use it to threaten somebody and demand something.’ I ain’t never told nobody I was gonna hit them with the hammer. I ain’t raised nobody or nothing. So they can’t say that that’s a weapon.”
He continued, “and I told my lawyer that and my lawyer surprised like, ‘No you right.’ I’m like, ‘The fuck you mean I’m right? You knew this before me. I get to tell my co-defendant, ‘Look read the law book. Look at every case,’ and we end up getting up out that motherfucker.”
The parole period for Tee Grizzley ended in October 2016. Just days after his parole expired, he recorded his popular track “First Day Out” as a free man. Over 227 million people have watched the song’s music video, in which Tee Grizzley appears wearing the same same orange jumpsuit he used while incarcerated. His featureless first album My Moment, which is now gold, was released in 2017 as a follow-up to the song.
“When I was locked up bro, I was just writing a whole bunch of songs,” he told DX at the time. “I wrote this one song. It didn’t have a hook on it. I was like I’m going to be calm and first and then turn up. All through my bid, I was just adding to it. Touching it up and critiquing it. I was like I’m going to drop this first. That’s why I named it ‘First Day Out’ because that was the first thing I did when I got out.”
Since then, Tee Grizzley has released songs often. He just released Half Tee Half Beast, a project that includes cameos from Lakeyah and Baby Grizzley.
Below, you can see the entire interview with Million Dollaz Worth Of Game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=QyiBHASDW24&feature=emb_logo
